FORMER U.S PRESIDENT GEORGE BUSH ACCIDENTALLY VOTED FOR OBAMA

Former U.S. president George W.
Bush accidentally voted for Barack
Obama at a polling place near
his Crawford, TX home.
According to local reports, the two-
term Republican was confused by the
instructions on his electronic voting
machine and mistakenly cast a ballot
he intended to discard.
Witnesses say Bush argued with poll
workers for several minutes
afterwards in a effort to redo his vote,
but in accordance with state law they
ultimately denied his request.
The embarrassing incident may have
gone unnoticed if it weren't for a local
newspaper reporter who happened to
be voting in the next booth. Suzanna
Everett, a politics correspondent for
the Waco Times witnessed the entire
ordeal and crafted a cunning scheme
to make it public.
Left On Red
Barred by ethics rules from using
knowledge gained within a polling
station, Everett waited for Bush to
leave the facility and ambushed him
with a trick question designed to fool
him into revealing the news himself:
"Mr. President Fox News is reporting
that you've accidentally voted for
Barack Obama. Would you care to
comment?"
Thinking that his mistake had already
been found out, Bush sought to
minimize the damage:
"Yes unfortunately because of the
incompetence of the folks who
designed the ballot, my vote counted
for the other guy," Bush responded.
He then attempted to explain exactly
how the mishap occurred:
"First of all, everything was very
mismaladjusted on the screen. You
shouldn't put the senators and the
congresspeople and the presidents all
jumbled together like that. It's too
crowded. Just confuses folks."
Bush then explained that after
marking the wrong candidate, he
sought to correct his error by clicking
the red "Cast Ballot" button, thinking
that it was designed to 'cast away' the
ballot and bring up a fresh one:
"Usually red means stop and green
means go. I thought I was stopping"
A New Legacy
Bush is no stranger to election day
controversy, having been pushed into
office himself by the Florida fiasco of
2000. In that election hundreds of
votes intended for Democratic rival Al
Gore went to protest candidate Pat
Buchanan instead due to poor ballot
design.
In an official statement released
shortly after the event, former
President Bush said his experiences
today have inspired him to make
electoral reform the signature cause
of his post-presidency:
"Laura and I will be dedicating the
next few years to fixing our electoral
system. Every American deserves a
clear, simple ballot when they go to
the polling place."
However, the system Bush used has
been deployed successfully around
the country with little incident. A
spokesperson for the company that
manufactures the machines says they
stand by their product:
"Until today we have never had a
single instance of someone confusing
the "cast ballot" button for a "cast
away ballot" button. This is a problem
unique to Mr. Bush, and we have no
plans to change our machines."